In a city as bustling as Washington DC, and on a campus as lively as AU, it’s important that young students with a million things to do get ourselves out of the library and exploring the Nation’s Capital. The first coffee house and book store I dared to explore as a freshman, Politics and Prose, is still one of my very favorites a year and a half later. Though my list of coffee shops to visit is about a mile long, Politics and Prose always floats back at the top.
On the corner of Connecticut and Nebraska Aves, the placement of P&P couldn’t be more prime. If you’re like me and your diet is centered around ice cream, coffee runs through your blood, and you consider yourself a bookworm, this is surely the area for you. Surrounded by Sugar Fox and Little Red Fox, there’s an abundance of foods, a strong Wi-Fi connection, stronger coffee, and hundreds of books waiting to be read.
The upstairs of the storefront serves as the book store, with dozens upon dozens of table-displays and hundreds of shelves filled to the brim with books of all genres. Along the left wall is fiction, and opposite the fiction is the non-fiction, separated by different subject matter. My personal favorite section is the religion and spirituality section in the back-right corner of the first floor. As a big religion and spirituality nerd myself, I can attest to the ample selection of books ranging from individual narrative spiritual journeys to holy scripture itself. I always find myself reading the blurbs of Anne Lamotte and Eckhart Tolle among many others for hours on end—and no, that isn’t an exaggeration.
My favorite part of P&P however, is the basement, home of the coffee house. For my fellow constantly overcaffeinated friends, the baristas will whip you up a rich coffee or espresso alongside a toast, sandwich, or salad of your choosing, my favorite being the smoked salmon and dill toast. After I get my food and my drink, I always find myself cozying up to the window sill, next to the community board, where there are dozens of flyers and business cards tacked up to be seen. P&P always features a series of paintings or creations by a single artist up on the wall of the coffee house. When I went this past weekend, they were featuring the work of a local artist, Edith Graciela Sanabria, whose use of bright colors and abstract patterns immediately drew me in.
Altogether, P&P is the perfect marriage of books to feed your curiosity, good food to fill your stomach, coffee to keep you up, and art to please the soul. As cheesy as that was, I couldn’t more highly recommend spending your Sunday morning in the book house on the corner of Nebraska and Connecticut.
